It's a Wonderful Life

Earlier this week, I watched It's a Wonderful Life (for only the second time).  I noticed that in the scene where George and Clarence are drying their clothes after having jumped in the river, the framing is such that George is enclosed by the clothesline.

I may be making too much of it, but I think this could mean two things.

First, this could illustrate George's skepticism about who Clarence is.  He doesn't fully accept his claim to be an angel, and this visual divide between the two represents the barrier of George's unbelief.

Second, this separation of George could act as a foreshadowing of the world Clarence will show him where he's never been born.  He's set apart visually to prefigure his absence from Bedford Falls.

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I also noticed a slight but significant difference between George's two interactions with the man whose tree he runs into with his car.  Right after George hits the man's tree, the man complains to George and says, "My great-grandfather planted this tree!"  After George wishes that he'd never been born (and thus hasn't run into the tree), he encounters the man and comments about his tree, and the man mentions that it's "one of the oldest trees in Pottersville."  In both, the man is concerned with his tree, but in the world with George, his concern is more personal (related to his great-grandfather), while in the world without George, his concern is centered on the status of the tree itself.  Such a difference in the man's concerns seems to suggest that in the world with George, a greater emphasis is placed on personal connections.

Julie & Julia

Recently, I re-watched Julie & Julia and noticed the significance of a detail.

The day after Julie experiences many disappointments (she falls asleep and doesn't hear her timer so she burns the stew; Judith Jones, the editor of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and Julie's dinner guest, cancels because it's raining; and then, worst of all, Julie has a fight with her husband over how concerned she's become about her blog), she goes to work wearing a turtleneck, over which she conspicuously wears the necklace that her husband gave her for her thirtieth birthday earlier in the movie:

This prominent display of the necklace tacitly indicates that Julie is thinking about those better days in her relationship with her husband.

Indiana Jones

Lately, I've been reading Why Did It Have to Be Snakes? from Science to the Supernatural, the Many Mysteries of Indiana Jones by Lois H. Gresh and Robert Weinberg.  Recently, I read a section about zeppelins and how they relate to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  The book claims that "after recovering the Grail diary in Berlin, the Joneses attempt to leave Germany aboard the majestic LZ 138 zeppelin," but when I referenced the film, I found that the ship's designation is actually D-138.  It's glimpsed in only a couple shots, though:

I hadn't noticed this detail before, but since it was drawn to my attention, I now think that it's slight reference to THX 1138, George Lucas's first feature film.  There are similar references in the Star Wars movies.  In A New Hope, Luke, in disguise as a stormtrooper, fabricates a "prisoner transfer from cell block 1138;" in The Empire Strikes Back, General Rieekan gives the order "Send Rogues 10 and 11 to Station 38;" and in The Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith, there are battle droids whose markings bear passing resemblances to the number.  (See more details here.)

When I re-watched Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull earlier this year, I noticed a 138 there, too.  It's one of the house numbers in the mock town that's destroyed by an atomic bomb test.

Star Wars: Rebels - S1E5 - "Breaking Ranks"

At the beginning of the Rebels episode "Breaking Ranks," there's a brief establishing shot of Lothal City.

At first, I noticed only the visual symmetry that this shot has:  the Imperial facility is centered, and the Star Destroyer on the left is somewhat balanced with the sunset on the right.  Then, I realized that there's a contrast between the two sides of this shot and that this contrast illustrates how the Empire's occupation is changing Lothal.

The right side of the shot shows a bright city with rolling hills beyond it, but the left side shows a darkened city emitting smoke from Imperial factories.  The Star Destroyer overhead indicates the Imperial oppression, and the sunset with which it's balanced may even represent the fading of the old days of Lothal.

There are episodes later in the series that demonstrate more clearly how the Empire is stripping the planet of its resources ("The Occupation" S4E5 and "Crawler Commandeers" S4E8), but this episode shows it in its early stages.

[EDIT:  According to the Star Wars website, each part of "Spark of Rebellion" is its own episode (S1E1 and S1E2), but I thought the two parts constituted just one episode (this is how it's listed on IMDb), so my numbering for the first season is off.]

Star Wars: Rebels - S1E4 - "Rise of the Old Masters"

I recently started re-watching Star Wars: Rebels.  Even before I got to it, I was thinking about "Rise of the Old Masters," and I realized that it's significant that Luminara Unduli is the Jedi Master in this episode.

After the Ghost crew hears Senator Gall Trayvis's broadcast claiming that "one of the Republic's greatest peacekeepers, Jedi Master Luminara Unduli, is alive," Kanan says that "she was a great Jedi master, brave, compassionate, disciplined" and tells Ezra that "she'd made an excellent teacher for you."  From the moment she's introduced, Luminara is presented almost as the epitome of the Republic-era Jedi, but in this time period (the "dark times" of the Empire, as Obi-Wan describes it in A New Hope), she's more suited for this idealization than some other Jedi.  Luminara's name is related to lumen (gen. luminis), the Latin word for light, so in a way, she's the embodiment of the light side of the Force and acts as a symbol of the old Jedi order.

[EDIT:  According to the Star Wars website, each part of "Spark of Rebellion" is its own episode (S1E1 and S1E2), but I thought the two parts constituted just one episode (this is how it's listed on IMDb), so my numbering for the first season is off.]

Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace

I recently re-watched The Phantom Menace for research for my Star Wars blog, and it gave me an opportunity to develop a couple ideas I had.

During their dinner conversation, Padmé tells Anakin, "Our ship was damaged, and we're stranded here until we can repair it," and he replies, "I can help; I can fix anything."  His prodigious technical ability seems to be an attribute of his status as the Chosen One.  In the same way that he will restore balance to the Force, he can restore balance to mechanical systems and get them to work again.

Like Return of the Jedi, the title is ambigious.  There are three characters who could be "the phantom menace":  Anakin, who is only a child in this movie but will grow up to become Darth Vader and terrorize the galaxy; Palpatine, who uses his position as a senator to disguise his identity as a Sith Lord; and Darth Maul, who mysteriously appears in order to track down Queen Amidala and harrass her Jedi protectors.

Metropolis

Earlier this week, I watched Metropolis for the first time in something like thirteen years.  I think previously I'd watched a rather low quality version I'd found on the internet, but this time I watched a DVD of a restoration from 2002.  In any case, I noticed a fairly trivial detail.

A little less than halfway through the movie, Maria tells the gathered workers about the Tower of Babel.

The image of the tower seems to be based on the painting "The Tower of Babel" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder from 1565 (it's called the "little" Tower of Babel to distinguish it from an-other painting Bruegel did):

Coincidentally, a day or two before I watched the movie, I'd read the account of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9.  The version in Metropolis is somewhat different, though.  Here's the text from the intertitles:

Come, let us build us a tower whose top may reach unto the stars!

And on the top of the tower we will write the words:  Great is the world and its Creator!  And great is Man!

... but the minds that had conceived the Tower of Babel could not build it.  The task was too great.  So they hired hands for wages.

But the hands that built the Tower of Babel knew nothing of the dream of the brain that had conceived it.

One man's hymns of praise became other men's curses.

People spoke the same language, but could not understand each other...

"HEAD and HANDS need a mediator."